A bit of a mismatched title to this post, I must admit. I was not going to talk about my body image “issues” in this blog, but as I’ve said before, I want this blog to pretty accurately reflect my experiences this summer in Turkey. But no worries – I will talk about body image stuff AND fun adventures, too!
For those of you who don’t know, when I was in the 8th grade I developed anorexia. I would say its severity level probably hit the middle of the spectrum, closer to the less severe side. I dropped from 110 pounds to 82 pounds at 5’2” in just a few months, but the numbers are not really the point. The point is that something like that – something that messes with the way I see food and my body – doesn’t go away for a long time, and perhaps will never really go away. Though I gained the weight back before graduating 8th grade, I struggled with bingeing and restricting in high school. Things got better junior and senior year, worse freshman year of college, and then better again to the point where it’s the best it’s been since eighth grade.
I must admit, one of the things I was most worried about when coming to Turkey was how the trip would affect my eating, or even just my thoughts about food and my body. Transition periods, even something as simple as the start of a new quarter at Northwestern, always make my “issues” flare up a bit. Being lonely is also a big trigger, and though I have family here, I don’t see them every day (far from it), and I’ve had to make a whole new set of friends. Much to my delight, for the first week and a half in Turkey, it seemed that my food and body thoughts/behaviors weren’t much affected. However, last Monday I for some reason ate to the point of discomfort at lunch and dinner. I think I might’ve been a bit lonely, especially at my solitary Monday dinner, after coming back from a lovely weekend with my family and an eventful Sunday night with friends. I also think I didn’t eat enough Saturday and Sunday, which is never good. There are numerous other reasons, of course and as always, but I won’t get into them. Unfortunately, even one off-kilter day kind of threw my whole week off. I feel much better now, and it could’ve been much worse; I don’t want to forget how far I’ve come since the eighth grade! However, I also don’t want to ONLY talk about the fun things I’ve been doing and leave out some of my more private struggles. In other words, I don’t want to paint a false picture of paradise.
So, how did I make the journey, which for me is still hard, from feeling terrible around food and about my body to feeling much more “normal”? My first step was going out with two friends for dessert in Bebek after dinner on Monday. I almost didn’t want to go out because a) I wanted to get ahead with my hw, b) feeling like I ate too much = feeling bad about myself = wanting to isolate myself, and c) wouldn’t eating MORE food just make me feel worse, not better? But I decided to go out because a) I didn’t have that much hw actually due Tuesday, b) the times when I want to isolate myself are normally the times when socializing would do me the most good, and c) no, actually, what would make me feel worse, not better, would be to let something as stupid as how much I did or didn’t eat in a day stop me from a nice evening out with friends.
So I went out for dessert in Bebek on Monday night. I told my friends about the famous Bebek Mini Dondurma place that I had just gone to on Saturday with my family, and we all went there. Then we went to one of Bebek’s many dessert waffle shops, a magical place where you can top a warm waffle with any imaginable combination of fruit, syrups, jams, candy pieces, and other confections. As you can see in the picture, the three of us shared one amazing waffle – and suprisingly, the best part was the candied chestnuts! I went to bed rather uncomfortably full but pretty happy.
On Tuesday night, I took another step to combat my loneliness and the off-kilter feel of my week by going out again with friends. This time we went farther than Bebek, all the way to Sultanahmet. As I might have explained before, Sultanahmet is also known as the Old City and is the oldest part of Istanbul (who would’ve guessed?). It’s a famous, touristic neighborhood home to the Ayasofya (Hagia Sofia), Topkapı Palace, Kapılıçarşı (Grand Bazaar), and Sultanahmet Camii (Blue Mosque), among other attractions. It was already evening, but it was okay because we didn’t want to tour the interiors of any of the sites – we just wanted to eat dinner, walk around during iftar (the nightly fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramazan), and go to a rooftop bar for a glass of wine. We successfully completed our missions and had a wonderful time. In the picture I’m in, we were in Gülhane Park, which is right next to the Topkapı Palace. From there we walked to the main square that is bordered by the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya and arrived just in time for iftar. I had no idea that so many people would set up picnics to break iftar on the grass and benches in the square, but so they did. It was amazing to be in the center of everything when the Blue Mosque’s imam started his prayer and so many groups of families and friends broke their fast. A while later, we experienced a somewhat-less-reverent kind of wonderful when we found a rooftop bar and shared a bottle of wine. (Of course, we were still reverent of the amazing view, which included the Blue Mosque and a large chunk of the Boshporus.)
Wednesday and Thursday evenings I focused on homework – don’t worry, I am spending more time studying and attending class than I make it seem in this blog! Friday I went to Sultanahmet again, this time earlier in the afternoon and with a different group of people. We went to see the Yeni Cami (New Mosque), which is not as big as the Blue Mosque but is still breathtaking. Then we walked around the Mısır Çarsısı, or Spice Bazaar, the smaller version of the Grand Bazaar. After exiting, we aimlessly wandered the streets until stumbling into the Kapalıçarşı, or Grand Bazaar. We walked around and had tea before taking a ferry back to the dorms. (Warning to any future travelers to Istanbul: the ferries are the city’s most confusing form of public transportation, but if you love boats like I do, it is so worth it.)
That is all for now. I already wrote the blog post about the Fourth of July weekend, which I spent with family, but I will post it in a couple days. Thanks for reading, and iyi günler!